English Across Time

What are the four periods of English?

Old English (450–1150); Middle English (1150–1500); Early Modern English (1500–1750); Modern English (1750–present).

What were the main features of Old English?

Highly inflected, gendered, largely Germanic, strong/weak verbs, freer word order, and multiple dialects.

What is an inflection?

A change in a word's form/ending that shows grammatical function.

Why was Old English word order relatively free?

It relied heavily on inflections rather than fixed word order.

What were the four main Old English dialects?

West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian.

What languages influenced Old English?

Germanic languages, Celtic and Latin.

What happened to Old English's alphabet?

It initially used runes, then was influenced by the Roman/Latin alphabet.

What are the nominative, dative and accusative cases?

Nominative = subject; dative = indirect object; accusative = direct object.

What was the major impact of Old Norse on English?

It influenced vocabulary, grammar/structure, inflections, spelling, prepositions and articles.

Give examples of Old Norse words absorbed into English.

Egg, husband, leg, they, their and them.

What happened in 793 CE?

Viking raids began, bringing increased contact with Old Norse.

What was the significance of Alfred the Great?

He promoted literacy and writing/translation in English and helped strengthen English under Viking pressure.

What happened in 1066?

The Norman Conquest brought French-speaking rulers to England.

How did French influence English?

It had a huge influence on English vocabulary but much less influence on grammar.

What is linguistic layering?

The blending of English and French, producing words with related but subtly different meanings.

Give examples of English/French layering.

Freedom/liberty, begin/commence, answer/respond.

How did the plague contribute to the revival of English?

The death of many French/Latin speakers and social changes strengthened the position of English.

What happened to English after the plague?

English became dominant again in Britain, developing into Middle English with many French additions.

What are the key features of Middle English?

Reduced inflections, more French/Norse vocabulary, more fixed SVO word order, and major spelling/alphabet changes.

What happened to Middle English inflections?

They were reduced, with -s becoming the standard plural ending.

How did Middle English syntax change?

Word order became more fixed as SVO, with less reliance on inflections.

How did Middle English vocabulary change?

French and Norse loanwords greatly expanded English vocabulary.

What happened to Old English letters in Middle English?

æ, ð and þ disappeared; 'th' replaced some older letters, and j, k, q and z were added.

Who was Geoffrey Chaucer and why was he important?

A major Middle English poet who demonstrated that English could be used for important literature.

How did Chaucer use language in The Canterbury Tales?

He varied language according to character and context, using French-influenced elevated vocabulary and colloquial English.

What happened in 1476?

William Caxton introduced the printing press to England, helping standardise English spelling.

What is the Great Vowel Shift?

A major change in English pronunciation where most long vowels were raised and the highest vowels became diphthongs.

When did the Great Vowel Shift occur?

Approximately 1450–1700 CE.

Which subsystem does the Great Vowel Shift involve?

Phonetics/phonology.

How did the printing press affect English?

Books became cheaper, literacy increased, and spelling and grammar became more standardised.

Why did the London dialect become the standard?

London had economic, political and social power, and most publishing houses were located there.

What happened to English during Early Modern English?

Pronunciation changed, inflections continued to disappear, vocabulary expanded, and spelling/grammar became more fixed.

What happened to third-person singular verb endings?

-(e)th increasingly changed to -s, e.g. he taketh → he takes.

What happened to Greek and Latin borrowings in Early Modern English?

They increased greatly, especially in science, religion and abstract ideas.

What new syntactic features developed in Early Modern English?

Progressive be + -ing, do-support and increasingly common have-perfect constructions.

How did Shakespeare contribute to English?

He expanded the lexicon and creatively used word formation, metaphors, puns and idioms.

What is the main difference between Modern and Early Modern English?

Modern English mainly differs through its much larger vocabulary.

What caused Modern English vocabulary to expand?

The Industrial Revolution created new words, while the British Empire brought English into contact with languages worldwide.

What is a neologism?

A newly created word or a word created to fill a gap in English.

What impact did the British Empire have on English?

It spread English worldwide and led to international varieties through contact with local languages.

What is an international variety of English?

A variety that develops as English interacts with local languages and cultures in different regions.

What happened to some English features in colonies?

Historical forms sometimes persisted in colonies even after they were lost in Britain.

What is rhotic pronunciation?

Pronouncing /r/ in positions where it occurs after a vowel; it became typical of American English.

How did typewriters influence written English?

They produced simple, uniform printed text without requiring a large printing press.

What is QWERTY?

The keyboard layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter that became the basis of modern Latin-script keyboards.

How did computers affect written communication?

They made typing faster and enabled tools such as autocorrect.

When did the broader public gain access to the internet?

The 1990s, following earlier educational and military use from the 1980s.

How has the internet influenced English?

It created new shorthand and digital ways of expressing tone and context, such as emojis, GIFs, memes, acronyms and hashtags.

What is algospeak?

Modifying/censoring words online to try to avoid content moderation or bans.

What is word loss?

Words becoming archaic, losing impact, or disappearing because of changing needs, trends or causes.

What is word addition?

The creation or adoption of new words into English.

What are the main word-formation processes in your notes?

Commonisation, acronyms, compounding, affixation, blending, conversion and borrowing.

What is borrowing?

Taking a word directly from another language into English.

What is a cognate?

A word in different languages that traces back to a common ancestor and has related form and meaning.

What is the difference between borrowing and cognates?

A borrowing is directly taken into English from another language; a cognate comes from a shared ancestral language.

What happened to Modern English inflections?

They were greatly reduced; only a small set of regular inflectional suffixes remain.

What are the seven regular inflectional suffixes listed in the notes?

-ed, -s, -en/-ed, -ing, -er, -est and -s/-es.

How did Modern English syntax become more standardised?

Grammar books helped standardise grammar, and questions increasingly required auxiliary verbs such as do.

What is standardisation?

The process of a language becoming more consistent across its speech communities.

What is codification?

Developing and writing down norms for spelling, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

What is prescriptivism?

A focus on correctness that promotes rules or ideals about how language should be used.

What is descriptivism?

An objective approach that describes actual language use and patterns.

What is Standard English?

A socially prestigious dialect associated with education, institutions, codification and the media.

Why did Standard English gain prestige?

It was linked to London's power, publishing, education, government and other socially important institutions.

Was Standard English chosen because it was technically superior?

No. Its prestige developed from London's economic, political and social power and publishing industry.

What is the key difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism?

Prescriptivism focuses on how language should be used; descriptivism focuses on how language is actually used.

What is the overall change from Old to Modern English?

English moved from highly inflected, synthetic and gendered toward a more analytic language with reduced inflections, more fixed SVO syntax, greater standardisation and a much larger vocabulary.

What happened to English vocabulary across time?

It expanded through contact and borrowing from Germanic, Norse, French, Latin, Greek and many other languages, plus social and technological change.

What happened to English word order across time?

It became increasingly fixed, moving from relatively free Old English word order toward Modern English SVO.

What happened to English spelling across time?

It became increasingly standardised through printing, dictionaries and codification.